Main Area and Open Discussion > DC Gamer Club

Portal 2 gets a new level maker! Woohoo - thousands of new levels

(1/4) > >>

Carol Haynes:
Portal 2 has been updated to include the new test chamber maker.

Lots of Brilliant new games to play plus you can make your own.

Portal fans give my first attempt a quick try and see what you think:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=68641863
(updated to version 2 and added a few extra tasks and gotchas)

(Note there doesn't seem to be an easy way to search on Steam Workshop but that link will open the page in a browser - if you log in to your steam account in the browser you can subscribe to my new level which will then appear in your game!!!).

Please rate it and leave a comment - especially if you think it is OK!!

By the way this one (not mine) drove me to distraction and the solution is satisfyingly easy when you stop thinking:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=68458711

Deozaan:
Thanks for pointing this out. I've subscribed to your test chamber and the other one you mentioned. :Thmbsup:

Carol Haynes:
Ooo err missus - I have done it again. I must say I am quite pleased with this new level:

Labyrinthine Treasure Hunt
[Edit ... sorry Steam had a hissy fit and munched my original map - consequently I had to unpublish and publish again so the URL has changed]



Spent the last 3 days setting this one up. In terms of the number of bits and piences it is about at the limit of what the new puzzle maker is capable of. (I had grand ideas but the compiler kept saying too many objects).

PLEASE can some fellow Portallers give it a go and leave a comment on Steam (would be fun if you left one here too)

Deozaan:
I tried your Flying About map.

I didn't particularly care for it. I think the reason was because normally in Portal Test Chambers you are able to see what your goal is. But in Flying About, everything I wanted to reach was way up high and out of sight, which made me assume that it wasn't important until I was able to get somewhere or do something that brought it within sight.

After "flying about" for 15 minutes or so trying to figure out what to do, I just got frustrated. I saw the power indicators but I had no idea how to activate any of them. And maybe I just haven't played enough Portal 2 lately, but seeing non-activated, round, metal devices on the wall doesn't help me know what those things are or what they do, or why I should try to activate them, or even how to activate them for that matter.

Finally I noticed some white wall way up high behind a glass wall, but what I actually noticed was that I could just barely see some of the wall that wasn't behind the glass wall, and if I jumped and shot the portal gun at it while in the air, I could hit it. I actually felt like I was cheating. Was this section of the wall supposed to be accessible from just standing around? Shouldn't I be "flying about" somehow to get up there? Later I realized it would be even easier to shoot that wall if I had been "flying about" from a certain position. But the layout of the level was such that nothing made me look the way I was supposed to look.

If you've ever played Valve games with the commentary on, you may have heard them talk about how players almost never look up, and you have to give them a reason to look up. (Come to think of it, I think it was the Half Life 2: Lost Coast Demo that specifically mentioned this.)

Almost immediately upon entering the test chamber I went to the place where I was supposed to look and "fly about" and see that patch of wall way up high, but there was something else that drew my attention away toward the opposite direction: A black section on the wall. This was curious to me because I hadn't seen it before. Everything else was grey or white. So I was busy trying to figure out what this black section of the wall was. After spending a minute or so trying to get into it or activate it somehow I decided I'd have to activate it from the other side of the lasers. So then my attention was turned to that. And as I said, that led to several minutes of me flying about trying to figure out what all those mechanical devices were for or how to activate them and wondering what was up on the shelf way up high by the acid or slime or whatever it is.

When I finally saw the patch of white wall behind the glass--or more accurately the patch of white wall that wasn't behind the glass--the puzzle was fairly straightforward and easy. I just needed to have an idea of where to begin.

But then again, had that been obvious from the beginning, the puzzle would have been solved in just a couple of minutes and may have seemed too easy.

At the end of it all, I was just too frustrated to want to try the Labyrinthine Treasure Hunt, especially after reading the description. It sounds too laborious and not enough fun, crazy, portal physics, action-y stuff.

So there's my review of Flying About.

Carol Haynes:
Oh dear - sorry! The intention of the game was to get you jumping through Portals to gain height to get onto the ledge on the left as you walk in - once up there the rest of the puzzle layout is pretty obvious. I though it would be clear that you had to get onto the ledge because you can actually do anything else in that part of the chamber. Also there are blue indicator lines up there showing you that is how you get the ball and cube to drop.

Have a look at the second puzzle it isn't nearly as quirky (remember flying about was my first attempt).

The thing to remember in Treasure Hunt is that all the items you collect en route are used almost immediately after you collect them but then to finsh the level you have to retrieve them all to use again at the exit (watch out for a mysterious button in the first room that doesn't seem to do anything - it is used at the end but is only a funnel ride away) - not nearly as tedious as it sounds at the end because you activate various shourtcuts to go back to the location of those bits and pieces. The level it self consists of a number of rooms and corridors, each with a fairly standard (easy) Portal test.

Navigation

[0] Message Index

[#] Next page